Willy Takes a Trip
==================

AKA my third JSW game, following "J4" and contributions to "Willy the
Hacker" and "J4". It's (hopefully) more coherent than J4 and more
challenging than WtH, it makes much more use of patch vectors
too. Like both of these games, there isn't a single consistent theme
in the game; rather there are several groups of adjacent rooms which
share a theme, albeit somewhat loosely.

By now the basic JSW engine has been very badly jacked to support
Geoff mode. Future games should feature it tidied up a bit, with
extra features: diagonal sprites, for example!

Important notice (to be read and understood before playing)
-----------------------------------------------------------

[asbestos garments ON]

The title is inspired by "Granny Takes a Trip", a reference to the
name of a shop in Swinging London in the mid-sixties. While the "trip"
in this is doubtless a reference to drugs, I want to make it clear
that it and similar drug references in the game are intended FOR
HUMOUR VALUE ONLY and DO NOT promote, advocate or condone the use of
drugs, legal or otherwise. If you are nevertheless liable to take
offence at these, I can only suggest that you don't play the game.

I don't think that taking drugs is at all clever, and - potential
flamers please note - I don't actually "do" any drugs, except for the
odd glass of wine or champagne. But I do rather enjoy the black humour
which goes with some aspects of drug-taking, and some of this humour
found its way into the game. I suspect that this is also true of the
original JSW, which - so Matthew Smith claimed in his interview with
YS - was written under the influence of certain unspecified but
probably illegal substances.

Flamage which displays no understanding of the above will be sent to
the bit bucket. The rest of you, just enjoy!

[asbestos garments OFF]

"Enough preaching; get on with the GAME, Geoff!"

What's the music?
-----------------

The title tune is, of course, "Greensleeves", and I defy anyone to fix
the bum low note! The in-game tune is one half (the lower one) of the
guitar riff from "And Your Bird Can Sing" by the Beatles.

Room descriptions
-----------------

"Power Source": Every game should have one!

"The Underground Laboratory": The first room which will be encountered
in the subterranean section of the game.

"The Store Room": Self-explanatory; could it be a refugee from
_Technicial Ted_? SPOILER: From some angles the green thingee isn't as
deadly as it is from others.

"The Mysterious Passage": Mysterious for an unfathomable reason which
is in itself full of mystery.

"The Secret Cabinet Minister": Originally just a cabinet, but the pun
was irresistible. There are many (some might say too many) such puns
in this game.

"Low Tonee": A particularly awful pun on the name of another
room. Nothing to do with laser printers.

"The Graveyard of Awful Jokes": All puns lead here, as they have to.

"Downhill": Not as empty as it may appear! Linked to "The Store Room"
by means both foul and devious. The sprite, by the way, started life
as a type of waterfowl; the legs are Willy's.

"The Garden of Forbidden Fruits": Mostly limes. SPOILER: There's a
surprise at the bottom-left, if you're facing the right way...

"The Room of Stippled Blocks": A tribute to rooms we've all known
which betray a lack of inspiration for the block designs! Notice the
rather lethal patch vector; it's there to ensure that the room isn't
*too* easy.

"A Quiet Corner to rest in": I thought of having a room with a moving
gap in the floor or ceiling, but no room seemed appropriate. Instead,
I found a rather better solution, which JSW conoisseurs should
appreciate. It can be done; remember, as in _The Hobbit_, that barrels
float.

"Phew, That Was Lucky": See the Cliff room for explanation of the
title. Dig the groovy conveyor while you're figuring it out!

"Field": Precisely that. Remnants of the Megatree here, possibly. The
start of the "outdoor" zone.

"Manic Mushrooms": A legacy of Willy's fungal obsession from "Willy
the Hacker", of course. It was originally called "Magic Mushrooms" a
title which was later moved elsewhere.

"Hi Toni!": This and some of the neighbouring rooms are a tribute of
sorts to Toni Baker, a Z80 hacker who wrote several books and
contributed to certain Speccy Magazines. One of her contributions was
a UDG editor (YS #6, IIRC), to which a reader added a short
initialisation routine; the last comment in the source for this
routine was the name of this room. I suspect that the object should
properly be "AB", but in the absence of further information I can't be
sure.

"Light Screen Designer": Another Toni Baker room. The source code for
a drawing program of hers for the Speccy was serialised over several
months in "ZX Computing"; the name of the program provides the title
for this room. Whether or not the name was a joke - think "Lucy in the
Sky with Diamonds" - I've never found out.

"Up and down like a metronome": There was to have been a companion
room called "Back and forward like a yo-yo", but it got lost in the
cracks of the space-time continuum, whatever that is.

"No Place Like Home": The name is Roslyn's suggestion. The objects at
the bottom are collectible, but in a non-obvious way which needs a
little extra-terrestrial help.

"The Arches of Despair, I fear": Some sort of reference to Greek
mythology, I think. Watch out for the conveyors!

"Nineteen - Not out!": The title comes from a song by "The
Commentators" (the comedian Rory Bremner under an alias), which
parodied both Paul Hardcastle's then-current hit single "19" and the
ineptitude of the England Cricket team. (Nothing changes!) This is, of
course, room 19, and the block designs each reflect this.

"Iain's Stomach": A legendary bottomless pit. Ask him about the
smorgasbord at the Holiday Inn at Hogmanay.

"Up a tree": A companion to "Field". SPOILER: There's a hidden exit in
this room, but you have to know where to find it...

"Dense Undergrowth": A transition between the pastoral rooms below and
the more urban rooms above.

"Wherever you are...": Where is Toni Baker now, I wonder? She was
believed to have been sighted on the cover of an early issue of YS,
but apart form that, nothing...

"Master Machine Code!!!!": Among Toni Baker's books was the classic
text "Mastering Machine Code on your Spectrum". Those of you who cut
their hacking teeth on the venerable ZX81 will doubtless remember
screens like this! SPOILER: you have to clean this room for sympathy.

"The Cloakroom Attendants": I think this is another subconscious
reference to _Technician Ted_.

"The Three Wise Men": There were to have been seven (or was it six?),
as in the Government's economic advisors, but there wasn't room for
them all.

"Reception / Antechamber": The henious practice of getting two rooms
for the price of one is exposed once again. (One of my earlier JSW
games had three rooms in one.)

"The Windowbox": Well, it had to go somewhere.

"Oh no! CLIFF!": A reference to an episode of the comedy series "The
Young Ones", in which the four intrepid heroes were IIRC stuck on a
runaway bus. The title of the room comes from a comment made by one of
them on seeing a sign advertising the film "Summer Holiday"; the bus
promptly fell off a cliff and landed on a beach, whereupon a voice
said "Phew, that was lucky" - hence the room some distance below.

"What's This?": A reference to the unidentifiable sprites, suggestions
for whose identities will be gratefully be accepted.

"Doubleback Alley": The title of a song by the Rutles, a Beatles spoof
band who featured on Eric Idle's "Rutland Weekend Television" and in
the very fine spin-off film "All you need is Cash". The song itself is
a rather effective pastiche of "Penny Lane", probably one of the
greatest singles ever. (I'm showing my age here!) The objects are
supposed to be milk-bottles, for reasons which are obvious if you've
heard the song.

"with sugar": Part of a wider original concept that originally
included "Tea!" and two unused rooms "The Cow" and "With milk". This
was abandoned when I realised there was no way I could draw a sensible
cow with JSW blocks.

"The Big White Telephone": Talking to God on this instrument of
communication is an activity also referred to as "Driving the
Porcelain Bus" and "Going to meet Huey and Ralph". Said activity may
be observed at the end of the game.

"some sort of castle, I suppose": From an entry in "The Deeper Meaning
of Liff", viz: "PARROG: Could be some sort of bird, I suppose".

"Don't Rest until Grandma's Sober": A reference to a song lyric in a
short sketch in a comedy programme with Mel Smith and Griff
Rhys-Jones, whose title I forget. The sketch was a take-off of the
Beatles circa 1967 and revolved around the supposed drug references in
their songs. Clue: think "Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds" again.

"Alice in Acidland": A reference to a laughable film from 1968 which
purported to be an anti-drug polemic but soon turned into what they
used to call a "nudie", in which the eponymous heroine fell in with a
group of "twilight hippies" who turned her on to LSD.

"The Steno Pool (or maybe not!)": In a review of the aforementioned
film on the Internet, most of the cast are described as looking like
they came from the steno pool (= typing pool, but with
stenographers). I don't know what that was supposed to mean, but this
room probably doesn't look anything like a steno pool. SPOILER: The
object is collected by jumping through a solid block in the room
below; Andrew Broad suggested this.

"The Penthouse Suite": There's a game in here somewhere. Hmm...

"The Balcony": Hmm... this theme could indeed be quite promising - a
JSW game set in a house?

"The Leith Police": At the time of writing, I work in Leith, but I
couldn't tell you how that relates to this room.

"Willy's Drinking Licence": This comes from an idea of Andrew Broad's
that people should be allowed at most one of a licence to drink and a
licence to drive. Gnash your teeth at the deviously simple but
devilishly cunning patch vector.

"Tea!": Another, rather obscure, Rutles reference, and an excuse for
further terrible puns (this is room 42). A rather frustrating room
too.

"Womflechompies": I don't know where the title came from!

"The Hideaway": Not much happening here - SPOILER: hang on, what's
that at the bottom-right corner?

"The Custard's Last Stand": Pun-o-rama! The jumping-off point for
several different directions (well, three actually).

"Holy Floor!": Is this the only Batman reference in a JSW game? Or is
it yet another bad pun? The jury's still out.

"Twilight Hippies": See Alice. Harder than I'd intended it, thanks to
a bug in the block-drawing code.

"Health-food faggot": The opening line to King Crimson's "The Great
Deceiver". Not the first King Crimson-inspired JSW room, either. The
blocks are supposed to be wafers of something, and create a rather
effective optical illusion, if I may say so.

"Not normally baffling": Although it can be sometimes.

"Crack City": A David Bowie reference this time, ultimately inspired
by Andrew Broad.

"The Promised Land (arctic)": Yes, the main part of the room *is*
reachable, but you have to gain sympathy first.

"The Promised Land (tropical)": A companion to the above. Strictly
speaking, neither room is a proper Promised Land, but the titles have
stuck nevertheless. and I can't think of better ones.

"but no sympathy": A sort of free-association with the room below, via
"rich tea and sympathy", whatever that is. A very difficult room
indeed; one of my hardest ever.

"Eeee, I think I can fly!": An obnoxious green duck puppet called
Orville, who had Keith Harris's hand up its behind, had a hit single
with this title in 1986 (IIRC). Orville's titular squeaks were later
sampled on a dance record which celebrated Ecstasy. The irony of this
was too good to waste.

"Bike Ride to the Moon": The title comes from a song by the Dukes of
Stratosphear, from their album "25 O'Clock", and was suggested to me
by Alasdair of J4 fame. A very lunar room too, if I say so myself.

"Oh no! SPACE INVADERS!!!": "Willy the Hacker" had a Pac-Man room, so
here's another room celebrating one of the original computer
games. Enjoy the use to which the patch vector is put in this room!
Those who remember the original Space Invaders may, rightly, insist
that colour is provided solely by coloured strips across the room; but
for lack of memory, this would have been implemented in a patch
vector.

"Psychic Bread and Butter": A line from the fine song "Soul Food", by
the sadly now defunct band Cud.

"Magic Mushrooms": Here it is, the most garish patch vector of them
all!

"Weeds": The upper levels are reachable in non-obvious ways. The title
introduces the zone which pertains to a certain recreational herb.

"Don't Inhale, Billy": This is, of course, a reference to Bill
Clinton's solitary drug-related experience. The title was also used as
a sample filename in an example of a Linux command in a book.

"Good Skunk": Credit goes to Andrew Broad for suggesting that the
liquid blocks be made into stairs, a la "Out on a Limb". The patch
vector didn't turn out quite how I'd wanted it - Willy wasn't supposed
to turn white when he fell - but the effect makes some sense all the
same.

"Gettin' Really High": Who knows where lies the only way out? Can you
stay straight for long enough to find it?

"...": AKA "My Drugs Hell by Miner Willy". Screaming paranoia and
unpleasant flashbacks. What happens if you overdo it.

Credits and others
------------------

I am indebted to Andrew Broad for his comments and suggestions during
the gestation and creation of this game, and have no hesitation in
heartily recommending his JSW games to JSW conoisseurs all and
sundry. Alasdair Swanson gets a mention for suggesting certain room
titles and patch vectors.

This game is in the public domain: share and enjoy! If you want to
copy any parts of it, feel free - but give me a mention.

Emails with comments, suggestions and bugfixes to:

geoff@morven.compulink.co.uk

"Bugfixes"? There shouldn't be any bugs - it should be possible to
comlpete the game without losing any lives - but I can't be sure. Any
which are found will be credited.
